


intrinsic

by beanbun (ramenree)



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Dark, Flowers, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Prostitution, Snippets, ramenreesnippet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:14:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28285302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramenree/pseuds/beanbun
Summary: "the flowers, they rip me apart.""hanahaki?""if hanahaki grows flowers in your chest that fuck you up inside."
Relationships: Cai Xukun/Wang Ziyi
Comments: 9
Kudos: 12





	intrinsic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyveracruz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyveracruz/gifts).



> Prompt from @ISEEZIKUN on twitter ♡
> 
> Hi, ramenree here. This pseud (beanbun), will be used to post shorter drabbles and snippets of fics that I probably won't get to for a very long time but that I write anyways to help me relieve stress. I'll be posting here fairly frequently, so stay tuned if you ever want to read quick drabbles of ipd and npc boys!
> 
> This is a snippet of a work-in-progress described by the summary of this fic. I am posting it because I might not be able to get to it in a while, and I might just keep the drabble as a drabble. 
> 
> main: [ramenree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramenree/pseuds/ramenree)  
> 

When Ziyi wakes up again, Xukun is coughing up blood into the toilet.

“Xukun?” he says gently, from the hallway. He’s still tired, and his vision is a bit blurry still from how he just dragged himself out of his bed, but it all doesn’t quell the dread pooling at the pit of his stomach.

Xukun retches into porcelain once more before twisting his head to the side, leaning his dead blond head against the toilet seat. There are purple and teal marks all around his eyes: from the makeup, from the bruises, Ziyi isn’t so sure anymore.

“Hey sweetheart.” Even now, the words roll off his tongue like honey. “You’re awake now?”

“Cai Xukun,” Ziyi says, in a voice that he hopes is as measured as he needs it to be. “What are you doing?”

Xukun smiles. His lips are puffy, stained with red, and when they part, Ziyi can see that his teeth are tinted with the colour as well. Some morbid part inside of him thinks that it’s attractive -- the insane, broken look in Cai Xukun’s eyes and the way his lips are just as red and just as puffy as they were five hours ago, when Ziyi was fucking him against the window -- but the part of him that still has a heart is panicking and worried as hell.

“Coughing up blood, of course,” Xukun says with casualness befitting a situation where Ziyi was just asking him about his day. “What does it seem like I’m doing?”

Ziyi rushes over, and immediately, Xukun collapses away from the toilet bowl and slumps over in Ziyi’s arms. He’s incredibly weak -- Ziyi can feel that he is just from how he drapes over him, so weak and broken that it’s barely the feisty Cai Xukun he knows --, wheezing blood and saliva still all over Ziyi’s shirt. 

Xukun’s hands tug themselves into his shirt, and Ziyi allows him, cradling Xukun’s head in his arms as he peers into the toilet.

 _Ah_.

The water in the toilet bowl is a bright scarlet, the edges painted with blood. But on top of the bloodied water, there are five red rose petals, floating serenely and cracked all over.

Xukun must have caught his expression, because he smiles, the corners of his lips bloody as well. “They’re pretty, aren’t they?”

“Xukun, how long has this been going on for?” Ziyi demands. He pulls Xukun into him, hurting for the way he feels like a ragdoll in his arms, tearing his eyes away from the mess of flower petals and blood right across from him.

“A few weeks?” Xukun supplies weakly, hands dipping into Ziyi’s shirt again. “More or less.” He hacks again, splattering Ziyi with more blood.

Ziyi stares down at Xukun’s gently smiling face. “And you’ve been coughing up blood and flowers this entire time. Without telling me why.”

Xukun laughs the best he can. “The flowers, they rip me apart.”

Ziyi swallows. “Hanahaki?”

“If hanahaki grows flowers that fuck you up inside.” Sometimes, Ziyi wanted to punch the snide, snarky, almost smug look off Xukun’s face. “Except usually, you start puking all of the flowers up. They usually don’t stay inside your chest and mess you up there.”

He’s so pale, Ziyi observes. Pale enough that the colours pressed into his skin pop against how white he is, skin translucent with how it clings to his skeletal frame. Xukun is dying, he knew that from the start, when he first started hooking up with this rabid, broken, yet overwhelmingly beautiful prostitute. However, he just didn’t know that this was part of the reason why he’s been looking worse and worse.

And suddenly, he’s overcome by an intense fear that he’ll lose him, that he’ll disintegrate into blood and rose petals and the scent of his ginger shampoo, and Ziyi will be all alone again. It’s twisted, maybe, how much he’s thinking of himself even at this time, but it’s hard to define where everything stands with Xukun. He’s so incredibly powerful like that: powerful and sexy and deadly, even when dying.

“Why then?” He cradles Xukun’s head into him.

Xukun laughs then, sending more red dotting into his clothes. It’s a surprisingly loud laugh, jarring and pained. “Don’t you know what sort of hanahaki this is?”

Ziyi shakes his head. There were so many types of hanahaki.

“Jealousy,” he says roughly. “The flowers stay inside of you when you’re jealous and you can’t help it. That awful, dark, morbid jealousy that just makes you want to cut yourself open and everything around you too until you get what you want.” He smiles again. “That’s the feeling behind it”

“Jealous?”

“Of you,” Xukun says plainly, not hiding anything at all. Ziyi freezes. 

“I’m jealous of you and your clean life and neat house. I’m jealous of your stable job that’s far away from all the shit and filth in the alleys that I live in. I’m jealous of how your dog ate better than I did for thirteen years of my life. I’m jealous of how you can see me as someone expendable to not invest in too much, because I’m a whore, and in a few months I’ll pump myself with so many painkillers that you won’t even need to remember my name.” His voice is light, but his words are so vicious, Ziyi feels like he’s tied to the bed that they just slept in together, chained to the headboard as Xukun tears into him. “I’m jealous of how you don’t need to wake up every night listening to the sounds your lover made when his throat got slashed open and he bled out. I’m jealous of how you can be happy without me, because you can just go to bed and stop coming here if you wanted to at any given time.” He paused, swallowed.

His cheeks are a bit red now, his eyes rabid and filled with hatred. “I’m jealous of how you don’t _love me_.”

Ziyi’s hands are shaking when they press Xukun into his chest again, not caring if Xukun was crying, bleeding, trembling with the emotion of what he just had to say. “I do though. I love you.” He says it, because he believes it. 

He can feel Xukun smile, even when it’s into his own chest. “But you aren’t coughing up flowers like I am though, are you?”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> kinda shitty and dark because it's 4 am when I'm posting it, but I really was in the yikun feels and mey's prompt makes me feel evil >:)
> 
> Thank you for reading! Leave a comment or kudos if you like; they really motivate me.
> 
> [ramenree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramenree/pseuds/ramenree)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/ramenreee) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/ramenree)  
> 


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